22 April 2015 – DXpeditions to Tonga & Micronesia – Chris Tran GM3WOJ – GM3HAM – Lothians Radio Society

In prep – PSP

The LRS welcomed Chris Tran, GM3WOJ / GM2V to the meeting on 22 April 2015. As well as being the keeper of the GM3WOJ 10GHz beacon, Chris is an intrepid HF DXer and traveller.

In April 2014, Chris travelled to Tonga with Keith Kerr GM4YXI/GM5X to activate A35V and A35X respectively. They made 30000 QSOs in a 2-week period.

In April 2015, Chris and Keith travelled to Chuuk in Micronesia to activate V6Z, making 22600 QSOs in 10 days. They encountered extreme weather in the form of Typhoon Maysak which destroyed some of their antennas, followed by a Tsunami warning.

Thanks to Chris for the use of his slides in this report and to Malcolm GM3TAL for photos and notes – psp.

See also: www.v6z2015.com for a day-to-day report on the 2015 Micronesia DXpedition.

Chris explained that although he himself was “semi-retired”, his DXpedition partner, Keith GM4YXI was a very busy professional (a world expert on lung cancer). This had advantages and disadvantages – it meant that Keith had limited gaps in his professional diary for much more important things like amateur radio.

Tonga is towards the bottom right, while Micronesia is north of Papua New Guinea (north of Australia)

They operated from Heilala Holiday Lodge in the NE of Tongatapu Island.

DX bearings from Tonga.

Chris explained that preparation was one of the important things for any DXpedition. You need to take “everything but not too much” – you need simple but relevant and light weight tools – for example: a specific screwdriver or hexkey (not a whole set!!), to get into equipment to make simple repairs and keep on the air!

Chris also emphasised the importance of looking after yourself. He had damaged his arm, it had healed, but such (relatively!) minor accidents might make the difference between success of failure of the expedition.

Tonga is relatively prosperous compared with Chuuk. Radio conditions were good on the whole in the spring of 2014 and many contacts were made. (Even with 50 watts to a vertical dipole in the back garden, LRS member GM3TAL had an SSB QSO on 17 metres).

The importance of a good quality flight case was emphasised. Although £150 may seem expensive for a plastic box, if it preserves your rig then he deemed this to be money well spent.

Chris spoke of the vagaries of mains supplies in far flung locations – anything from 100 to 250 volts. Low mains voltages needed thicker cable, an, obviously, you need to take the appropriate plug!

If you work lots of bands with single aerials for each band, then you need lots of feeders. RG213 or similar is heavy, so use Aircell instead! You may not know beforehand how far the shack will be from the beach (usual location for vertical antennas) so you need to take “plenty”. But you may not be able to take a feeder for each aerial. There may also be obstacles such as fences between the shack and the aerials, so you need a torch when you swap antennas in the hours of darkness. It was a “twenty minute operation” to change bands at night!

Other ways of keeping weight to a minimum are light weight keyboards, and home made interface leads.

An antenna analyser is essential, not for detailed measurements, but to give reassurance that things are working the same as they were when you set it up at home. This photo “proves” that Chris and Keith actually put up an antenna for 60 metres………prompting some comments about how the folk at home always wanted the DX to be equipped for the bands with a “6”. i.e. 160, 60 and 6 metres – somehow these bands present challenges to a light weight DX team.